Reported by Staff

GRAND JUNCTION - The Ritter Administration’s new head of economic development told business officials in Grand Junction on Monday the Governor is “very interested” in using natural gas as a clean source of power for electricity generation, and that he no longer views it merely as a “bridge fuel” to an economy fueled only by wind, solar and renewable fuels.

The meeting was akin to stepping into the lion’s den for Don Marostica, a Republican from Loveland who gave up a seat in the Legislature to assume the economic development post in Ritter’s administration. He spoke before a mostly skeptical group at the Business Incubator Center. Nevetheless, Marostica said natural gas is “where the Western Slope is going to sing” in Ritter’s effort to build a new energy economy.

Noting that renewable fuels will serve only about 10-12 percent of Colorado’s energy needs, he told his audience natural gas will remain in demand as a fuel.

Several West Slope politicians offered skepticism to what appears to them to be an about-face by Ritter on the importance of the natural gas industry here in Colorado, especially since the Governor led the charge to adopt new and more stringent drilling rules soon after he was elected to office. Those regulations approved by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission earlier this year, have driven energy investment dollars and jobs from the state, say several prominent Republicans.

To be fair, the Governor has been more vocal in his support of the Colorado natural gas industry during the last several months, and has made some concrete moves, including July’s announcement that it would seek a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to dramatically expand the use of compressed natural gas as a fuel source for industry, transit and public vehicles in Colorado. And earlier this year, he urged prompt approval of the Ruby Pipeline in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Such actions and Monday’s reassurance from Marostica are apparently not convincing the two Western Colorado Republicans — Scott McInnis and Josh Penry — who are vying to take on Ritter in next year’s election. Penry from Grand Junction said the Governor’s new respect for drilling comes too late. Last week he co-authored a letter to the COGCC urging the one-year drilling permit be extended to two years to help energy companies deal with the new regulatory hurdles.

“When Bill Ritter admits that his oil and gas regulations were a catastrophic mistake and fixes them, when he fires the anti-drilling activists that he appointed to the oil and gas commission, when he apologizes to the thousands of men and women who have lost their job and homes as a result of his administration’s extreme policies, then and only then will I believe Bill Ritter has changed his tune on natural gas,” Penry wrote in an e-mail to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “Until that time, it’s all just election happy talk, and talk is cheap.”

“They should have done their singing before we lost the jobs, not after we lost the jobs,” McInnis said. “We told you so, governor.”

During the same event, Kathy Hall of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association invited Marostica to return to western Colorado to tour areas where natural gas drilling takes place. She reminded him about “an enormous amount of severance tax” that supports the state budget.

For his part, Marostica told his audience that he is not a newcomer to natural gas, pointing out that he sponsored legislation requiring the state to buy vehicles fueled with compressed natural gas.

Trying to reassure the business people in his audience, Marostica, emphasized that he understands the difficulties of doing business, and urged them not to give up on projects because of regulation. He said that he met 131 times with the California Coastal Commission to get a project through there. He also stressed the need for economic diversification to help the state weather economic troubles.